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On Thanksgiving Day, while giving thanks for a perfect meal, more than one central Ohioan will be thinking back on past gatherings that were far from that.

In fact, some remember the meals not as dinners but as disasters. A few of their stories:

Welcome to the family

Evan Dean had been dating Ashley Campbell of Reynoldsburg for just a few weeks when she invited him to Thanksgiving with her extended family in Obetz seven years ago. Casserole dishes and a platter of turkey covered a large glass table.

Dean and Campbell, both 17, were among the first to go through the line and had just sat down with overflowing plates when they heard a cracking sound.

"I looked over and the glass table just collapsed, causing food to go flying all over the place," Dean said.

Shattered glass and the tumble to the floor ruined all the food. Only the desserts, safe on the kitchen counter, remained for the stunned, hungry guests to eat.

"We still talk about it every year," said Dean, now a third-year law student at Capital University.

The disaster didn't ruin the couple's relationship. They're planning a May wedding.

A trip to the emergency room

Kathleen Knese was a pro at cooking Thanksgiving dinner. A few years ago, she went to Dayton to teach her sister the finer points of roasting the big bird.

With flair, Knese sliced through the turkey's plastic covering -- and filleted her own index finger from knuckle to knuckle. Blood spurted onto the floor, her clothes, the kitchen counter.

Soon, boyfriend Ralph Winans III was rushing her to Miami Valley Hospital, where doctors stitched her up and released her, four hours later. They got back just as the turkey was coming out of the oven, perfectly cooked.

Since then, Knese, 44, of the East Side, has cooked plenty of turkeys.

"But I let somebody else open the wrapper," she said.

Multiple stabbing

Turkey is Deborah O'Neill's favorite food at Thanksgiving. In 2007, she had a beautifully browned specimen sitting on her stove ready to carve at her Dublin home. Next to it were pots of mashed potatoes and a savory pumpkin soup her 19-year-old daughter, Casey, had meticulously made out of fresh pumpkin.

O'Neill reached into a shelf above the stove for a glass serving bowl. Somehow it slipped out of her hand, hit the countertop and shattered. The shards flew all over the turkey, potatoes and the laboriously made soup.

Thanksgiving dinner that year was butternut squash, green-bean casserole and pumpkin pie.

Desperate measures

Cooks often realize that the bird they've carefully purchased and kept frozen can't be thawed -- not safely anyway -- in mere hours or, in one case, in the car.

Even experienced cooks can get a little too creative when confronted with stone-cold poultry. That happened to Chris Woodyard's mom, Betty Durtschi, in 1987 when Durtschi was cooking Thanksgiving dinner at her Far North Side home.

She realized the night before that she'd forgotten to thaw the bird in the refrigerator a few days ahead, her daughter remembers.

"It seems she put the bird on the dryer, turned on the dryer and left it on overnight," Woodyard said. The next morning, Durtschi popped the turkey into the oven and a few hours later served it for dinner.

The result? "Hours of projectile vomiting for my family," said Woodyard, now 56 and living in Dayton. "And the ironic thing was that my mom was so hygiene-conscious!"

Mike Mullen's idea was equally brilliant in 1995 -- he thawed his bird for 2 1/2 days under a coat in his Honda Civic.

"I was smart enough to know I shouldn't leave it on the porch because a dog or raccoon might get it," said Mullen, who was in his early 30s living in a Hilliard-area apartment. Since the temperature outdoors was in the low 40s, he figured his car would be a good thawing chamber.

On Thanksgiving, the turkey looked OK, so he stuck it in the oven.

"When it came out, it was a smell to behold," he remembers. "The turkey had rotted. I thought I was smarter than the Butterball experts, but I hadn't factored in the sunlight coming through the car's windows."

Mullen has successfully cooked plenty of turkeys since then. One difference?